TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES 2 Release Date Set for June 3, 2016

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles may not be one of the biggest hits of the summer, critically or at the box office, but it looks as though Paramount is happy with that $65 million start because the studio has officially set Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 for a June 3, 2016 debut. Writers Josh Appelbaum and André Nemec will return to pen the sequel and Michael Bay will be back to produce with Andrew Form and Brad Fuller of Platinum Dunes, however, there’s no word on whether or not Jonathan Liebesman will return to direct the sequel, too.

Hit the jump for more on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 release date news. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is currently in theaters and stars Megan Fox, Will Arnett and William Fichtner.

$65 million isn’t a bad start, but Paramount might have jumped the gun on this one. Apparently the movie had a $125 million production budget. Thus far, the film has taken that $65 million at the domestic box office and then another $28.7 million overseas. It will make back that $125 million, but what about the money spent to promote the thing? And even if it earns all that money back too, how much of a profit could it possibly make?

The weekend-to-weekend percent change could prove to be a big problem for Turtles. Look at Green Lantern, for example. That film opened with $53.2 million in June of 2011, but that wound up amounting to 45.6% of its total domestic gross because it fell so fast. Turtles should be in better shape, but because it will continue battling Guardians of the Galaxy and have to face The Expendables3 and Sin City: A Dame to Kill Forin the coming weeks, there is a chance it could run into a somewhat similar problem.

According to Deadline, this is what Adam Goodman, President of Paramount’s Film Group, had to say about the plan to move forward with the sequel:

“Launching a new take on the Turtles into the feature film world was a daunting task because as fans of them ourselves, we felt a great responsibility to ensure audiences were going to experience everything they loved about the Turtles, while also getting to see them brought to life in a way they had never been seen before. The result exceeded our high expectations and the response to the film is beyond great, making it all the more fun to get started on the continuation of their story.”

The financial results may have exceeded their expectations, but they didn’t achieve that goal of ensuring that viewers experienced everything they loved about the Turtles. One of the biggest problems with this rendition is it’s not even about the Turtles. It would have been more appropriate to title the film April O’Neil, which is unfortunate because, as presented here, it’s more so Megan Fox just playing dress-up as April O’Neil, not delivering a fresh, interesting or even a fully realized version of the character.

Hopefully Appelbaum and Nemec realize that. However, it does seem as though there might have been more to their script than what we get in the final film. For example, that just couldn’t have been all there was to the tension between Raphael and Leonardo. And it also seems as though the folks behind the film might have noticed that Michelangelo’s humor worked well and then just taken it way too far.

It was a disappointing representation of the iconic characters, but there are some redeeming qualities and the source material will always have a major draw, so I still walked out wanting more. As long as that’s what this sequel is and not another April O’Neil/Vern Fenwick show, this property is well worth another go-around.